The Storyteller
by Talyn
Summary: Eugene Fitzherbert has told stories his whole life.  Now he's telling his own.  One-shot.


Author's Note: It's been a long, long time since I wrote any fan fic, but I've got a need to stretch my creative muscles a bit and a little bit of free time – and so, without further ado, I'm pleased to present my latest creation. As always, Disney owns the characters, and no copyright infringement intended.

**The Storyteller**

So, here's the thing. I'm a story teller. Always have been. Growing up, I would read these old stories about knights in shining armor, princesses in towers, and gleaming white castles atop magnificent cliffs, and I thought to myself, _this_ is the life I was meant to live. I wasn't meant to be stuck in an orphanage in the shadow of the cathedral, scraping by on the church's charity and whatever I could beg for. So I devoured every story and book I could find, reading up on adventurers historical, legendary, and in-between. When the orphanage's meager collection of books was read through, I moved on to the city library.

I found a few books that told of the life of adventure I craved, and read them through as fast as I could dig them up, and when those weren't enough, I'd make them up. I spent most of my teenage years – well, the parts that weren't spent racing around the city and narrowly avoiding brushes the with guard – with a half circle of the younger orphans around me, telling them my own tales, always finding something bigger and grander to top the last.

The old priest who ran the orphanage did what he could to support us, but the he never had a lot of money to spend on the kids there – and what he had, he had to spend on the young and the sick. He tried to set us up with apprenticeships when we got a little older, so we could start making money and living on our own, but there were never enough to go around. Besides, I never had the patience to throw myself into any sort of trade – apprentices, especially ones who didn't have family looking out for them, were practically slaves to their craftmasters, and bowing and scraping to some old man just so I could learn to be like him was _not_ the life of adventure I wanted.

So, that left crime. Certainly a more exciting career, though one which tended to have a retirement plan in the shape of the hangman's noose. Still, I was young and hungry enough not to care, and I turned out to have a knack for it. I'm not going to depress you with the gory details of the next couple of years, but suffice it to say that I collected some scars and learned some hard lessons, and that just about nobody knew the city rooftops or the forest better than I did by the time I reached adulthood.

I never gave up on those tales, though, and I kept all the books I could buy or steal in my little flat near the docks. After a good heist, I'd have a pint with some of the other lowlifes and I'd still tell my stories, only this time, instead of some faceless prince, _I_ was the hero, romancing the noblemen's daughters as I tweaked the noses of the Guard and made off with the loot to my impenetrable fortress. It sure as hell made for a better life than the quiet desperation, short rations, and tiny apartment I'd have to face as soon as the tale was done.

I was good at what I did, don't get me wrong, but I knew my luck would run out one day, and I'd end up as that guy trying to think of a glib remark – that no one would remember – on my way to the gallows. So I tried to save up some money to get out of the city and go someplace where the guard didn't want my head, maybe someplace warm and sunny. Life never seemed to work out that way, though, and the money never seemed to stick around long enough to do me any good, and so I stayed – each year my pile of books got little bigger, but the stories in them seemed to be getting farther away.

So when Ronnie Stabbington cornered me in the bar one night and told me he had a job that was going to set him and his brother up for life, I listened. Don't ask me how, but they had managed to get a key to the servant's gate at the King's Castle, and a map of the grounds that would lead them straight to the lost princess' coronet. What they needed was a second-story guy who could get from the roof to the crown and back up again – and that was where I came in.

So I said sure, why not. At the worst, it wouldn't work and we'd have to bail, and hey, that would make a great story for the guys at the pub.

As it turns out, that was when things got out of hand really, really, _really_ quickly, and all of a sudden I there was girl who turned out to be an honest-to-God princess in a tower, and there were sword fights and daring escapes and newfound friends and, er… affection. A lot of affection. You see, this girl, Rapunzel – who wasn't really a girl at all, but a woman – couldn't walk ten feet without finding something wonderful and new about the world. She was every storybook princess _and_ every plucky farmer's daughter all at the same time, and for the first time in forever there was somebody important enough to me to share my _real _stories, the ones about the scared orphan who just sort of made it up as he went along and tried to muddle through the best he could.

There was a lot of excitement, some heartbreak, a daring escape or two, and then out of nowhere I was dying. There was a lot of pain, a perfectly good shirt and vest was ruined, and I was going to have to watch the princess get dragged off into a darkness so deep I would never find her even if I searched my entire life. The worst part was that she was going to go willingly, just so this scared orphan could see another sunrise and tell another tale.

It was then, only then, that after a lifetime of telling those stories that I finally learned what they were really about – those princes and knights didn't face down dragons and armies so they could cover themselves in glory, and they didn't do it so they could brag about in their gleaming castles later. They did it because something or someone else was more important to them than their own happiness – more important than their own lives.

A storybook knight would have broken his chains, reclaimed his sword, and fought a duel to the death to keep his princess safe from that ancient, evil old woman. Unfortunately, I wasn't a knight, and I didn't have a sword, and even if I could have reached the lock pick I kept in my boot the bleeding would have gotten to me before I worked myself free. However, an orphan out in the streets learns a few tricks that knights don't, and I knew a fist-sized shard of silvered glass is as good as any dagger if you don't care that your hand gets cut up when you use it.

So I cut off her hair and ruined the magic, and I didn't care. I knew then that even if my story didn't get a happy ending, this woman I'd learned to love would be free to go on and have stories of her own and find her own happiness, and you know what? That was enough for me. I had just enough time to see Rapunzel one last time, and then I shut my eyes, and never expected to open them again.

As it turns out, it seems that Fate likes a good story as much as I do, and wasn't going to allow our little to tale to end just yet. Seems Rapunzel still had one last drop of magic in her, and it was enough to bring me back through death's door, and I woke up to feel her holding close. I don't know how long we lay there, alone in the tower, with her hands and my hands stained with blood, but we held each other in the darkness until it was no longer my story at all, but ours, and would be forever.

And that's a story worth telling.


End file.
